Dragonlance DRAGONLANCE LIVES! Unearthed Arcana Explores Heroes of Krynn!

The latest Unearthed Arcana has arrived and the 6-page document contains rules for kender, lunar magic, Knights of Solamnia, and Mages of High Sorcery.

In today’s Unearthed Arcana, we explore character options from the Dragonlance setting. This playtest document presents the kender race, the Lunar Magic sorcerer subclass, the Knight of Solamnia and Mage of High Sorcery backgrounds, and a collection of new feats, all for use in Dungeons & Dragons.

Kender have a (surprisingly magical) ability to pull things out of a bag, and a supernatural taunt feature. This magical ability appears to replace the older 'kleptomania' description -- "Unknown to most mortals, a magical phenomenon surrounds a kender. Spurred by their curiosity and love for trinkets, curios, and keepsakes, a kender’s pouches or pockets will be magically filled with these objects. No one knows where these objects come from, not even the kender. This has led many kender to be mislabeled as thieves when they fish these items out of their pockets."

Lunar Magic is a sorcerer subclass which draws power from the moon(s); there are notes for using it in Eberron.

Also included are feats such as Adepts of the Black, White, and Red Robes, and Knights of the Sword, Rose, and Crown.

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[Levistus's_Leviathan]

That's cool, you're welcome to your opinion.

It's not an opinion, though. All of what I said was absolutely true. "It's just magic" is a textbook Thermian argument, you can absolutely avoid "humans in funny hats" while also keeping the races from being problematic, and the ableist nature of Gully Dwarves is absolutely undeniable. Those are all factual, not opinions.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Are you unfamiliar with Dragonlance?

I'm certainly not, and I also don't see it. Kender aren't anything like Romani. Like individual wanderlust is not a traveller culture, it's individuals that like to wander aimlessly in their youth and then go home to the city where all kender live and settle down.

feat chains are back! Praise 3e

Hopefully only ever in contexts like this, and never for things like the old feat chains where you're paying a 2-3 feat tax for the ability to take the feat that you actually care about.

Taunt.
The supernatural ability to insult, granting disadvantage on attack rolls for one turn. This ability is super useful, and it doesn’t fall into the trap of trying to make a “tanking” power. So I approve of it. My only change would be to make it grant disadvantage on skill checks too.

I think the "tanking" aspect of other taunting style abiliites would fit better, because usually the result of kender taunting in the books is an enraged creature doing something dumb while trying to get to the taunting kender. That said, mechanically it's simpler to just make it a penalty and call it a day.

While there is merit in doing this going forward, it is also a huge blow to backwards compatibility. Backgrounds that aren’t from the MtG setting books, such as the adventure book backgrounds, are nowhere near this power level.

Just allow first level feats.

Could that be patched? Only with PHB feats, they missed the window for fixing that particular problem in the TCoE and XGtE gift set reprints.

Don't tie them to backgrounds. DMs who think any feat could break the game can curate the allowed list of feats, while the rest of us just don't worry about it.

And now we get to the other MtG mechanic, feat trees. I don’t like them. Unless you get a feat for free (and not all of these starter feats are free) you are looking at waiting until level 8 to realize your character, at the cost of two ASIs. While trailing by 1 on all your main class rolls is workable, trailing by 2 is just not fun. And that’s ignoring the actual power of the feats. Historically speaking, feat trees tend to have substandard feats to start off with, as a “downpayment” for the extra powerful feats you end up with later. Over all, the mechanic just isn’t a proper fit for 5e’s tighter power curve. When Strixhaven did it as a hack to replace the multiple-class subclasses they were experimenting with, I just gave a sigh with the consolation that it was another weird experimental mechanic confined to a MtG setting. But here we are.

The only aspect of this I agree with is the "downpayment" aspect of the starting feat. It's just bad. add back in the second cantrip, and the whole thing works fine.

As for waiting till level 8 to realize your character, this isn't a setting where being a Red Robed Wizard is a level 1 thing. These are more akin to prestige classes than to old school feat trees.

 

[darjr]

Just to add it wasn’t that long ago that I really thought we’d never see legal sales of the older stuff again, especially IN PRINT of all things.

Or a third party publishing an almost perfect clone of BX with expansions in an over half million Kickstarter.

My grognard inside is giddy.

WotC making the prior happen and allowing the latter is fantastic.

 

[AnotherGuy]

It's not an opinion, though. All of what I said was absolutely true. "It's just magic" is a textbook Thermian argument, you can absolutely not have "humans in funny hats" while also keeping the races from being problematic, and the ableist nature of Gully Dwarves is absolutely undeniable. Those are all factual, not opinions.

Like I said you're welcome to your opinion.

 

[Faolyn]

Only one of those are new WOTC settings

Since I don't play MtG or watch Critical Role, they're all new to me.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

Oh totally. I can hear the weeping already.

"I'm just a misunderstoooooooooooood Black Robe!!"

The main reason I dislike the switch from Enchantment to Evocation, "I can bend your mind to my will." is more transgressive than "Make fire! Go boom!".

 

[Maxperson]

In the long term, I don't think it makes a lot of sense for the older gamers to be the central focus for plans. There's a whole lot of space between "the central focus" and "completely ignored", however. So how about we not drive the points to extremes?

I didn't suggest that we should be the central focus for their plans. In these threads, though, I get and see a lot of responses that are along the lines of, "WotC should be focusing on the newer, younger players and not the old guys." That's what I'm pushing back against. I even said in the post you quoted that I'm not saying that we in the 40+ age group are being neglected and that I was talking about posts here.

 

[Weiley31]

want from a sourcebook for the setting are moon magic rules for more than one class,

I would love for that to happen, but somehow that feels like Psionics happening in a way everybody would want in 5E. At most we'll probably just have the sorcerer and the wizard. Or something.

 

[This Effin’ GM]

The main reason I dislike the switch from Enchantment to Evocation, "I can bend your mind to my will." is more transgressive than "Make fire! Go boom!".

I absolutely agree. Enchanment isnt INHERENTLY evil, but its definitely abusable. On the other hand, blowing up someone with a fireball is the spell working exactly as intended and in a campaign with a foundation in war, I feel like we get to the weirdness of how is damaging with a spell considered having more potential for evil than swinging a sword.

 

[Weiley31]

Oh good grief.

This is 2022. Are we STILL having this discussion.

Of course we are. It's EN-World. Where else is this fight suppose to happen?

You don't really think Morrus would want us to go over to each other houses and settle the dispute in the only way the Heavens would want us to: Via this!


Because I know that not one of you would be showing any mercy during a round of this.